THOUGH the knowledge and obedience of the doctrine of the Cross
of Christ be of infinite moment to the souls of men, for that is
the only door to true Christianity, and that path the ancients
ever trod to blessedness; yet, with extreme affliction let me say,
it is so little understood, so much neglected, and, what is worse,
so bitterly contradicted by the vanity, superstition, and
intemperance of professed Christians, that we must either renounce
to believe what the Lord Jesus hath told us, that whosoever doth
not bear his cross, and come after Him, cannot be his disciple
(Luke 24: 27); or, admitting that for truth, conclude, that the
generality of Christendom do miserably deceive and disappoint
themselves in the great business of Christianity, and their own
salvation.

BY all which has been said, O Christendom! and by that hotter
help, if thou wouldst use it, the lamp the Lord has lighted in
thee, not utterly extinct, it may evidently appear, first, how
great and full thy backsliding has been, who, from the temple of
the Lord, art become a cage of unclean birds; and of a house of
prayer, a den of thieves, a synagogue of Satan, and the receptacle
of every defiled spirit.

THE daily cross being then, and still, O Christendom! the way
to glory, that the succeeding matter, which wholly relates to the
doctrine of it, may come with most evidence and advantage upon thy
conscience, it is most seriously to be considered by thee,--

I AM now come to unlawful self, which, more or less, is the
immediate concern of much the greater part of mankind. This
unlawful self is two-fold. First, that which relates to religious
worship: secondly, that which concerns moral and civil
conversation in the world. And they are both of infinite
consequence to be considered by us. In which I shall be as brief
as I may, with ease to my conscience, and no injury to the
matter.

HAVING thus discharged my conscience against that part of
unlawful self,... I shall now, the same Lord assisting me, more
largely prosecute that other part of unlawful self, which fills
the study, care, and conversation of the world, presented to us in
these three capital lusts, that is to say, pride, avarice and
luxury;

BUT let us see the next most common, eminent, and mischievous
effect of this evil. Pride does extremely crave power, than which
not one thing has proved more troublesome and destructive to
mankind. I need not labour myself much in evidence of this, since
most of the wars of nations, depopulation of kingdoms, ruin of
cities, with the slavery and misery that have followed, both our
own experience and unquestionable histories acquaint us to have
been the effect of ambition, which is the lust of pride after
power.

BUT the luxury opposed in this discourse should not be allowed
among Christians, because both that which invents it, delights in
it, and pleads so strongly for it, is inconsistent with the true
spirit of Christianity; nor doth the very nature of the Christian
religion admit thereof.

NEXT, those customs and fashions, which make up the common
attire and conversation of the times, do eminently obstruct the
inward retirement of people's minds, by which they may come to
behold the glories of immortality: